


A Hundred Reasons To Go To War (not who is right, only who is left)

by lazywriter7



Series: A Hundred Reasons to go to War [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Avengers Family, Civil War (Marvel), Friendship, Gen, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha-centric, Strike Team Delta, canon compliant to an extent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 23:40:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6446869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There’s no chain of command. No instructions to follow, no missions to complete.” He stood, and tucked his hands into his pockets. “You can fight with Captain Rogers, you can fight with Tony Stark. You can choose to walk away. You aren’t responsible to anyone.”</p><p>Natasha Romanov- spy, assassin, friend and Avenger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hundred Reasons To Go To War (not who is right, only who is left)

**Author's Note:**

> Part of title taken from famous quote- "War does not decide who is right, only who is left."

“I liked the long hair.”

_Snip._

Natasha straightened. The lock hung, curved and red (a blood moon, a stained sickle); clinging to the stainless steel by static or some other mysterious force. The handles moved wider and the scissor blades parted with a snick- the red strands tumbling to the floor.

“You always did like impracticalities.”

He kicked his feet up like he always did, chair creaking ominously. “You just have no sense of artistry.”

 _Snip._ No. Still too long. “Maybe I lost all appreciation for the artistic when the evil organization that bred me to be a coldhearted assassin used ballet as a technique to impose discipline.”

“Christ, woman.” Clint gave a full-bodied wince. “Jokes. Improve them.”

“Is this a compulsory part of the ‘how to be a person’ module we’ve been attempting?”

Clint blinked slowly, giving off the studious impression of trying his utmost best to ignore the words that had just been spewed. No matter how painstaking it was. “Lets try this again, Nat. Jokes are supposed to make you go, ‘ha ha, that’s funny’. Not, ‘oh my god, that’s traumatic and terrifying and sad and I feel vaguely bad for you’.

She pinched a hair between her nails, index and thumb, pulling it from the closed blades. “Not many people dare to feel bad for me.”

“That’s because they’re idiots.” He threw back, without breaking a sweat. Without analysing and deducing if pity was a good or bad thing, whether it would make her (or the person she’s playing) feel better or worse. Unthinking and natural, that was Clint Barton. “Your jokes are hideous.”

There was a twitch to her lips, like they wanted to curve up. She let them.

Lover of impracticalities, that was Clint Barton. There was something about him that made them work. The bow and arrow as a weapon. Natasha Romanov as a best friend. She didn’t entirely approve of it, but god fucking damn was she grateful for it.

 She straightened completely, hair tumbling off her shoulders, chin now neatly framed by an efficient bob. Clint’s frowning face was still visible above said shoulder in the mirror; she heaved a little sigh. “For heaven’s sake Clint. I gave my report to Fury. Natalie Rushman is done.”

And that…..was actually the truth of it. Job done, hairstyle gone. It was her own stupid little system of keeping missions separate, of making sure they didn’t bleed together like….in her previous employment. Hair didn’t make a jot of a difference, the biggest disguise was personality- personality that could be slipped on and off like a glove, silk or velvet or leather, whatever the weather called for. But this was her little ritual, her symbolic dusting off of shells that sat too close to the skin and yet crawled unsettlingly- of Natasha Rushman who blinked doe eyes at Tony Stark. Hair didn’t make a jot of a difference…..but she could pretend it did.

Speaking of hair……Sitwell’s smooth pate popped around the door, glasses winking in the mirror’s reflection. “Coulson wants you two in his office. Stat.”

The head disappeared, and Clint propelled himself to his feet, poor chair wheeling backwards in a screech. “Great. Now lets hurry, I need to accessorise.”

 

~

 

_Snap. Thud. Snap. Thud. Snap. Thud. Snap._

“Agent Barton, please stop that.”

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

“Stop bouncing a tennis ball off my office wall.”

_Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap._

“And snapping chewing gum.”

_Thud._

“At the same time. Stop both of them.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the ball making for freedom again; Coulson tossed a pen in the way and it deflected off to drop to the table, cluttering off the top to eventually roll across the floor, settling against the side of the waste paper basket.

Clint pulled on the frown that really didn’t make much of a difference to his face. “No, how did you do that, that pen has less mass than- how do you _do that_ -“

“I’m terminating STRIKE Team Delta. Effective immediately.”

Well. That was a nice way to get him to shut up.

“Sir. You’ve caught Widow’s inability- or shall we say ability, of making hideous jokes. Sir.”

Or maybe not.

“I am not joking, Agent Barton.” Coulson’s expression was inscrutable.

“Fuck you.” Clint returned, just as smoothly.

“Clint.” Natasha could hear her voice echo in the room, of a sudden. Strange, because the room was too small for echoes, and she hadn’t authorised words. “He’s serious.”

“I know.” Clint said, without missing a beat. “I don’t cuss that often.”

A moment of silence.

“I _don’t_.” More silence. “Its worse at work guys, do you have any idea how sanitising having old ladies live down the hall from you is?”

“Regardless.” Coulson shuffled a stack of paperwork on his desk; which was ridiculous, because his paperwork was always organised. Either he wasn’t looking forward to this at all, or looking forward to it way too much. Which was…..Natasha had thought everything had been going rather well, this time. “You’ll be returning your comms to me, and meeting Director Fury in the afternoon to discuss futu-“

“Keep Clint.” She hadn’t authorised that either, but she wasn’t going to take it back. She could feel her heart, a steady, quickened thump beneath her ribs. “He’s…..he’s good.”

“Natasha-” Clint had obviously spent way too much time parenting baby boomers. That warning tone actually sounded halfway dangerous.

She continued, it was too important not to. “He’s been here longer, an excellent record of completed missions and-“

“Natasha.” Coulson was looking at her now, mouth compressed to a straight line, a strange glimmer in his eyes. _‘That’s because they’re idiots’_ she could hear, ringing in her ears and the thought whizzed by- Coulson was not an idiot.

“Director Fury. 1600, this afternoon. Are we clear?”

Clint huffed, clearly displeased.

“Yes sir.” She said, and stamped down the heartbeat fluttering in her neck like it was a desperate butterfly.

 

~

 

“- _our_ record of completed missions is excellent; honestly sir, excellent is a bit of an understatement. We basically turned our extraction team jobless, Christ, I don’t think Coulson even pretends to give us an extraction team anymore; and never in the history of SHIELD has a two person team fulfilled that many objectives without fatalities-“

“How.” Fury massaged the bridge of his nose, very liberally. The eyepatch didn’t jerk from place. “Do you even stand these two.”

Coulson, standing unobtrusively in the corner till now, didn’t even twitch on being called to attention. In all his professionalism, he didn’t offer up any comments either.

Of course, it could be more than professionalism. Commenting on such a stated question in the event of the termination of the team would be…..inconsiderate. Even if he didn’t believe they stood up to muster in the end, Natasha didn’t think Coulson was an inconsiderate man.

“Agent Romanov.” Fury never called her by her codename. Not once. It used to……please her, before. Light a tiny spark of satisfaction in her chest. Now though, it sounded increasingly hollow. “You’re being suspiciously quiet.”

“Of course she is.” Clint bit out, apparently reverting back to hostility now that it was apparent that reason wouldn’t work. “She’s never raised a voice of question, never did anything but nod to every single fucking task you’ve ever unloaded on her shoulders, and now you’re throwing her back to the fucking Russi-“

“No one is throwing anyone. Anywhere.” If it had matched his image, Nicholas Fury might have been gritting his teeth. Since it did not, they were only left with a voice that was getting testier by the second.

But of course. SHIELD was good to its ex-employees. They’d probably set her up with a nice place, fifth floor of some high rise in Los Angeles where nothing ever happened because the celebrities were odious enough, a balcony where herbs can grow. They’d take her security clearance away in exchange though, and she’d probably never see Clint unless he snuck out and his new team would expect him to watch their backs but never do the same for him because he apparently fought long-range- but only till he took a tumble off a roof somewhere and god, there had been so much blood in Budapest and-

“You know about the Avengers initiative.” Natasha could barely hear Fury, not over her spiralling trail of thoughts and thundering in her ears.

“Coulson’s little fantasy baseball team. Yes.” Clint snapped with no inconsiderable amount of impatience. “Is that relevant right now?”

“Its obviously not fantasy if your bestie forever and ever spent the last few months vetting the latest prospective member.” Fury snapped back with obviously building ire.

“A fossil, the Green Goblin but with significantly less active brain time, a kid who obviously never got over robots and a god who might just drop by if we ask the rainbows nicely.” Clint was not being parsimonious with the mockery. At all. “If these are the prospective members, then I think its fantasy status is quite safe.”

Fury smiled then, and there was nothing amused about it. It should have been the first inkling to Natasha that something bigger was going on here. “We’re looking to put Agents on that list, if that changes your mind any.”

“Oh?” Clint arched an eyebrow. “Because all this team needed was a couple of poor jerks on clean up duty, trying to strain their hamstrings-“

Fury continued to smile unamused, stare unchanged.

Clint closed his mouth, slowly. His eyes had grown wider. “Oh.”

Natasha…..didn’t understand.

“Do you need us to vet more people?” And she didn’t understand why the stares in the room swivelled to rest on her, strangely heavy and meaningful. Or maybe she did. This was her revealing her cards, her being desperate enough to extend her time with the one organisation that hadn’t sought to consume her, even if it was as another ridiculous, undercover honeytrap.

Fury’s gaze was unreadable. “Or maybe the bow-touting carnie and the ex-KGB assassin will fit just fine.”

“That does not…that makes no sense.” Natasha didn’t pause, barely thrown off by the implication. This was nothing more than a hypothetical, and an extremely illogical one at that. “This is Agent Coulson’s dream project- its not…..its not typical. Its not meant to be a team of highly efficient agents. It’s a team of-“

“Heroes.” Phil’s voice joined the air softly. Natasha didn’t turn around to meet his eyes- his voice was too sincere. “You haven’t been the only one doing the vetting, Agent Romanov.”

 

Silence.

 

“So.” Clint’s voice was shaky. She didn’t look at him either. “We’re not being kicked out of SHIELD then?”

The words were gruff, but Nick’s tone was unmistakable. “Consider this a promotion.”

Natasha, for her part…….waited for her heart to slow. This was….this was good. She wouldn’t have to leave. She might get an upgraded clearance. Better tech, if Stark stayed on as consultant.

Stark. She’d been picked over Tony Stark, who’d created artificial intelligence. And there was a painstakingly maintained, neatly shuffled stack of Captain America cards that Coulson hid in his locker and brought out on special occasions.  And his face used to glow every time he’d speak of the Initiative, even though it was above their clearance- and Clint would snicker and she’d roll her eyes and her heart was speeding and speeding and her throat was dry and Clint was smiling at her, a weak, tremulous, wondrous thing.

She’d been a little girl, bred to execute massacres. And now she might just have grown up to save the world.

 “Dismissed, Avenger.”

  _Heroes._

“Yes sir.”

 

 

~

 

It was like hacking up a lung. Her throat was a living river of lava- scorched with bile and burning something fierce. She bent double over the park bench and retched- soundless, bringing nothing up but feeling like her passageways were ripping themselves apart all the same.

A pale-fingered hand proffered a tissue before her nose; she grabbed it with her right hand and spat out the fluid rapidly filling up her oral cavity. Black-brown flecks smattered the white; she balled it up and tossed it to the side, swallowing rapidly in order to facilitate salivation.

“An empty whisky bottle at the feet and no one looks twice at you trying to throw up your insides in a public park.” Quiet words, in a voice that had never stopped sounding familiar. “You haven’t lost your touch, Agent Romanov.”

She pressed cold knuckles to her forehead and breathed, sweaty strands of hair hanging before her eyes. SHIELD is gone, she could have said, no more agents, she could have said- except there had been the Helicarrier in Sokovia and not many ghost organisations could have conjured that out of mid air. You bastard, she could have said, _fix_ this, she could have said, I’m not, I don’t know how, this was never a part of my skillset- but the words that breathed out were flat and tired and fact more than opinion.

“So much for heroes.”

They watched the sun peek among the cypress trees of the Englische Garten, on its creeping, inevitable descent towards the horizon. A child laughed some distance away- Natasha could feel her eyes burn.

“I don’t know.” Coulson said. “The one I nominated seems to be doing pretty well.”

“You think so?” She asked, listless. Even though she might have killed for the answer two months ago. It just didn’t seem worth the effort anymore. “You think he’s doing the right thing?”

Coulson was silent. Then the words came, slow and measured. “Not the person I was talking about. And you’d be better equipped to answer that question, Widow.”

She didn’t stop to ponder the clarification. She couldn’t afford to. “I’m hardly the first person in the world qualified to judge Captain America.”

“And yet.” Coulson’s eyes skimmed over the evening sky, the sun’s last rays catching on the numerous fine wrinkles that had sprung all around his features. He looked exhausted. Hardened. Different. Especially with that déjà vu inducing mechanical hand. “We’re hardly ever entitled to opinions or judgements, but they spring up in our minds anyway.”

“Judgements are formed by a person’s sense of how things are ought to be. Consciences, morals, scruples. All a product of an upbringing consisting of adults informing you of what is, and isn’t acceptable.” She straightened, aching shoulders releasing with a pop. “I never had that. I have no frame of reference to base my judgements on. No conception of where exactly right gives way to wrong.”

“No. You had that.” Coulson smiled, a swift, brief flash. “Clint was your compass, for the longest time. Its why the two of you work, despite the fact that he doesn’t even know your middle name. You trusted him to know what the right thing was, in his own screwed up way, and that’s the biggest proof of trust you’ve given anyone.”

Natasha said nothing. It wasn’t comfortable, being at the opposite end of the psychoanalysis.

“It was the same for Captain Rogers, to an extent. I think he inspires that from almost everyone.” Coulson’s gaze grew sharper. More probing. Like he was trying to convey a million words in one. “But here you sit, injured in a fight with both of them on the opposite side. What’s the motive, Natasha?

The utter _wrongness_ of the words crawled into her ear, scuttling into the depths of her mind like loathsome insects whose very existence was questionable. It was almost funny how much- why words were this hard to listen to when she had images, memories- to go along with them. Strikes and blows and blood and never any eye contact. Never.

(…and wrong? Right? When had she conceived those concepts? When had there been any facts of the world she’d taken for granted? She was adaptable, that was her setting. She never grew comfortable- from comfort came negligence, a sense of complacency, leaving openings to get wounded-

…but all those were lies now, weren’t they. Part of yet another mask.)

“I don’t know.” She said.

“Don’t you now.” Coulson turned that penetrating gaze away, features unsmiling. It was like the world had stripped all the amiability from that unassuming façade he’d liked to present to the world. The edges were showing now. Like the masks had served their purpose, for a while, but he had no more patience for them.

A part of her mind wondered, almost absently, where she’d be left the day her masks stopped being useful.

On a park bench in Munich, puking up her insides apparently. Beside her, Coulson seemed to be waiting, features carved and unchanging, offset by the sinking sun- for maybe the same answer.

“You’re a rational woman, Natasha. And after all of it, the most loyal one I’ve ever known. But you didn’t fight on the side of your best friend and your Captain. Not this time.” His face twisted then, into some hard representation of resignation and weariness. “What rationale could be behind that, what emotion- if not a sense of right and wrong?”

“But Tony’s not right either.” The words spilled forth without restraint; for all that she never knew they existed, they were surprisingly hard to hold back. “He may be acting more reasonable at this point- but. They’re both……this is all out of some massively misdirected sense of guilt and- there’s something out there Phil.” For the first time during their conversation she turned to directly look at him, tone as frenetic as it ever got. Frustration, desperation, too powerful to try to hide. Fear. “There’s something outside pulling the strings. Someone. All the dominoes are falling- perfectly, too perfectly. Fights orchestrated before we have them. We’re all turning on each other and….I, can’t help-“ _feel_ “think that this is…the worst time.”

Silence.

Then- “SHIELD can’t help.” Coulson said, shortly, abruptly.

Her lips flickered to the side slightly. “Your words, or Fury’s?”

“Fury isn’t in charge of SHIELD any longer.” Coulson replied simply. “I probably didn’t see this as well before as I do now….but. The world needs SHIELD. If we pick a side, and fall- regardless of whether we were in the right or not, we wouldn’t survive it. Not a second time. And the world can’t do without it.”

A second or two of pause, maybe a second or two too long. “Even at the expense of the Avengers?”

Phil’s face softened. Or maybe crumpled- would be the better word, there were lines upon lines, and she didn’t see how the quiet, tired man sitting beside her could ever be commander of a pseudo-military organisation. Some tiny part of her wanted to scream, shake him by the shoulder- _You can’t be hurt when things fall apart, not when you’ve given up all responsibility for them._ But then he lifted his chin, and tilted it to look at her, and in the warmth of the setting sun, it was like some of the warmth of the Phil of old had returned. “You won’t let anything happen to them.”

“I can’t.” Her voice chose to say, next. Instead. These weren’t words that she was accustomed to. Beyond everything else- combat skills and manipulating and duplicitous and loyal and terrifying and all- Natasha Romanov was competent. She finished the job. She completed every task.

“I can’t.” She said, and her voice cracked, maybe the first time in a lifetime she hadn’t done it deliberately. “I don’t know how, this wasn’t……this wasn’t anything I was ever trained for.”

“There’s more to you than the Black Widow.” Phil said, and she could feel callused fingers pressing into her own. “And even if there isn’t, the Black Widow is more than she was made. You don’t like your masks Natasha- but every time you change your face, you make yourself. More than anyone of us.”

She…..hadn’t quite ever looked at like that.

“We always used to joke about Fury’s trust issues.” Phil straightened his shoulders a little, brushing the lint off his knees. Like he was preparing to leave already. “But for people like us, there’s no bigger trust than letting people do your job. Handle things that matter to you and believe that they’d do it right. He trusted Captain Rogers to bring SHIELD down,” a brief sardonic twist preceding the next words, “-trusted me to bring it back up.”

She knew it was coming. It wasn’t any less daunting for it.

“I trust you Natasha.”

 

“There’s no chain of command. No instructions to follow, no missions to complete.” He stood, and tucked his hands into his pockets. “You can fight with Captain Rogers, you can fight with Tony Stark. You can choose to walk away. You aren’t responsible to anyone.”

The fresh grass squelched under his soles as he walked away.

 

But that was the thing, wasn’t it. She was responsible. To Phil’s trust, even if he’d broken her own. To SHIELD, who’d brought her in from the cold, even if they dusted their hands off now. To the goddamn world that she bled to save, even if it had been naught but a cruel mother since she’d gained conscious thought.

To Tony Stark, who she’d labelled unworthy of the name of hero, even as he sacrificed his soul today. To Steve Rogers, owner of the set ways and the moral rigidity that she so disdained, and yet challenged her to find her true self. To Clint fucking Barton, who’d saved her once- and no matter how many fires she pulled him out of, how many wounds she stitched up, how many plates of food she cooked, how many times she stroked his head to sleep- she’d never be able to make up for it.

(If she wanted to leave, she’d have done it with Bruce a long time ago. She chose to stay then, and she could no more change that, as she could change now.)

 

She needed water. The taste of bile in her mouth was getting repulsive. And something to bandage her ribs.

_I had a dream once. That I was an Avenger._

 

And damn if she was going to let anyone take it away.

 


End file.
